01 November 2011 11:49 AM

We are All Doomed

High up in the Chiltern Hills, looking south across the Thames Valley towards Windsor Castle is the small village of Penn. Readers of the novels of Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one, another one) will know it well from her enjoyable book ‘In a Summer Season’. Mrs Taylor was an atheist, but did occasionally visit its parish church, where she would have seen a rare survival, the remnants of a ‘Doom’, or painting of the Last Judgement. It was rediscovered during repair works in 1938 (bits of it were very nearly thrown away) . If you, too, visit this church, you will find that you have to switch on a special light to view it . The plaque by the switch says (or used to say, it is some time since I visited) ‘For Doom, Press Switch’, which is alarmingly ambiguous.

There are several other similar paintings though only a few of these survivors, like that in Penn, were done on wood. Most were painted directly on the church walls and so have more thoroughly vanished, though there’s a startling example in the parish church at South Leigh near Witney . Sometimes the same scenes are done on glass, as in the astonishing windows at Fairford.

These came to mind at the weekend , which I spent in the lovely English cathedral city of Lincoln. Perhaps because I have spent so much time abroad, I’m more and more convinced that T.S.Eliot was right when he said (in ‘Little Gidding’) that the end of all our exploring will to be arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. My own country, almost inexpressibly beautiful at this time of year, is illuminated for me by a hundred memories of elsewhere - Russia, in and around the sad but very moving city of Moscow, rural Maryland, the Valley of the Elbe, Brandenburg, the Alps, the intimate country of Burgundy near Beaune, the French and German Rhineland, the high country of Zululand, the Golan heights, Persia between Esfahan and Qom, the extraordinary landscape on the railway line between Rawalpindi and Lahore, Bryce Canyon in Utah, the bare, hard hills and the long climb on the railway from Kashgar to Urumchi, the lakes and mountains west of Peking, the hills above Mandalay or the impossibly clear air of the Falkland Islands.

For me, a couple of days in Lincoln is as rewarding and as much of an adventure, as a visit to Prague. In fact the two cities have something in common, narrow ancient streets climbing up a steep hill to a fortress and a cathedral. But while Prague has its miraculous concentration of baroque buildings, somehow spared from all the wild destruction of the 20th century, Lincoln has in its cathedral one of the greatest buildings on the planet.I love the English cathedrals and have spent a rather large part of my spare time visiting all of them and then doing it again, and the only thing which worries me about this is that more of my countrymen do not copy me. There are, it is true, plenty of sights to see abroad, and I have tried to view as many of them as possible. But why do we ignore the astonishing treasures we have here? And why, I might add, do we so foolishly resent paying to see them? How else can they be preserved for the next generation?

Earthquakes and storms have destroyed much of what used to exist in Lincoln. Decay and sectarian fanatics have destroyed quite a lot more. Even so, the West Front of the cathedral remains one of the most arresting sights in this country. Floodlit at night or catching the evening sun, or sombre in the mist and drizzle, the immense and loving detail, combined with the vastness of the structure, are an example of what architecture can do when it really tries.

This really is frozen music, and I will leave it to each person who sees it to work out which passage of music it most thoroughly represents - something involving trumpets at one stage or another, almost certainly , but also deep and powerful drums as in Purcell’s ‘Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary’.

For a large part of the west front, now being rather wonderfully repaired, is a frieze of the Last Judgement, to which you may respond with nervous laughter or serious thought, depending on your disposition. The little depiction of Dives ignoring Lazarus, as the beggar has his sores licked by dogs, is among the earliest parts to be restored, and the sculptor has made a fine job of recreating the style of the long-dead master whose work appears so simple and natural but is of course nothing of the kind. It is easy to look at because it was so hard to carve.

What are we to make of these things? The same theme is often to be found among the greatest paintings in the greatest art galleries of the world. Do we treat it as a meaningless fairy tale? As a ghost story with no power to touch us ? Or as a real if allegorical warning that what we do here really does matter somewhere else? I prefer the last. The world will end for all of us, not on some hilltop, gathered into a throng by some mountebank preacher, but on the unknown day when we will all die. And then what? We have no idea.

But pass through the great doors of the Lincoln Minster and see what was done by people who believed that their lives were subject to judgement, as we do not, and wonder if it is quite so easy to dismiss them as ignorant, benighted semi-savages.

What remains of the glass of the two great circular windows at the crossing, the Dean’s Eye and the Bishop’s Eye, is art of the first class, executed with enormous technical skill. Look at the building itself, inside and out, on a scale, and possessing such grace that it puts to shame almost every British structure of the last century (I except the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool, which is of course a noble effort to maintain this dying tradition). Look at the carving on the great stone choir screen, and see if you can find it in you to scorn the masons who created such lovingly detailed beauty with tools so simple that we would call them crude (if you have time, travel the modest distance to the nearby Southwell Minster and look at the carving there, for further proof that our dim, clumsy, ignorant forebears possessed skills and devotion that we largely lack).

If our vain and puffed up assessment of ourselves is true, and the past was such a dark age of ignorance and superstition, why did that age of superstition produce art and music so immeasurably better than our own?

I think we might do well to be rather more modest about our achievements. It is interesting that the modern Britain, of motorways and shopping malls and hypermarkets, largely ignores or sweeps round the old cathedral cities. In London, people walk past Westminster Abbey without glancing at it, unless they are tourists. The one fully modern city which contains one of these masterpieces is Peterborough, where the Cathedral sits in strange solitude in a city centre that has no organic connection with it at all.

Could it possibly be that the difference between the two worlds has something to do with the fact that our forebears felt there might be a higher judgement than the one of their fellow-creatures, so easily fooled by public relations and smiling exteriors? Maybe doom has something to be said for it.

I agree with Peter that Cathedrals are breathtaking. Although I do feel that their grandness and might do sometimes give the wrong message. My father once taught me that if you couldn't find God in a blade of grass you wouldn't find him anywhere. Wise words that you seldom ever hear.

This was a thoughtful and elegant article. Hopefully we can do as Mr C Hitchens suggested and have our Parthenons and Cathedrals without having to swallow superstition but it is too soon to tell. We need something though as Anglican Christianity is finished.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be blaming the abstruseness of university philosophy courses for the government's inadequacies. This looks like a bit of a logical leap to me.

If politics and economics are, as you say, tangible subjects (by which you presumably mean practical, in some sense), why should the learning of an obscure and 'trivial' subject alongside them affect the ability to make practical decisions?

(I think you'd find anyway that politics at degree level is largely political philosophy, and economics, I imagine, is taught on a fairly abstract level, which wouldn't necessarily prepare anyone for the realities of political life).

I must declare an interest at this point, in that I'm studying philosophy at university. But still, I find your dismissal of philosophy a bit harsh. Aside from the undoubted merits of being able to reason carefully and consistently, a solid grounding in ethics, for instance, would surely do no politician any harm.

As for your rather utilitarian claim that 'wasting scarce financial resources on the teaching of these esoteric doctrines, benefits no one but the erudite teaching staff', I'd ask whether you think it might ever benefit the students?

Of course, it would probably be more useful for society as a whole if these people studied a good practical subject like medicine or engineering. But there can be only so many doctors or engineers.

Or should I drop my course and take up an apprenticeship? But the sort of society that you're envisioning, or which I assume you're envisioning based on what you said about philosophy, would be a rather spartan one.

Presumably, we'd also do away with courses in English, History, Art, Classics, perhaps Maths, since maths is useful only when being used to build or design or program something, and maybe even some of the more obscure and less practical areas of the sciences - advanced quantum mechanics, for example - which do little except to further human knowledge for its own sake.

I'm not sure anyone wants to scorn the masons, or even the buildings - I certainly appreciate great architecture, and I don't know many people who want to pull down old churches or grand cathedrals, they maybe have no intention of going there, but that's more due to them having little function anymore

Saying things were 'immeasurably better', is of course, purely subjective opinion, the way I see it, whichever time period you look at builders were just pushing the limits - cathedrals were pretty much the only thing properly built in the medieval period, and took many lifetimes over several centuries to make what we now see, of course they're going to be impressive, they were designed to be dominant, modern skyscrapers built at funny angles are basically the same display of power, which is prettier is a matter of individual taste

A lovely article. I wrestle with faith, drifting between theism and agnosticism (although I am a practicising Catholic). One of the things that arrests me when faith dulls, is the cultural residue of Christianity. Reading Eliot or Les Murray, listening to Bach, or viewing a magnificent Baroque church it is so very hard to dismiss belief. And viewing our (post?)modern world, with it's sly evasions and manifest follies, it is very hard to feel superior to my predecessors. Your English cathedrals are indeed wonderful - if fear of judgement was part of the process that led to their building, perhaps we should not dismiss this so lightly.

I personally wish to thank Mr Hitchens for a very thought-provoking article. Though Doomsday was a serious aspect of medieval piety, I do wonder whether other spiritual factors were at play. Mych can be said for Oswald Spengler's opus magnum, 'The Decline of the West.' Spengler argues that before the 1500s Western culture experienced its 'Spring Age': that is, the "birth of a myth of the grand style expressing a new God-feeling... World-fearing and world-longing... Earliest mystical-metaphysical shaping of a new world-outlook." Medieval culture truly expressed an awareness of the Otherness of the heavenly realm that could be felt on many social levels, whether courtly or rustic. None more so than in Britain herself: accounts at the time spoke of well-attended Mass-services by pious Englishmen. As emphasised by Steve Bruce (in 'God is Dead', 2002), men and women left reformed services early for the pub because they disapproved of the Protestant innovations. Thus, though Mr Hitchnes is right to point to Doomsday, it is worth saying that medieval man not only feared God, he also loved and breathed deeply of Him. It is a richness that cannot be easily revived.

Research published by the University of Warwick in 2010 showed that Medieval Europeans were actually twice as wealthy as the subsistence poor in the Third World today.They estimated that in today's money they had about $1000 a year to live on compared to the $500 a year people in really poor countries today live on.By the late middle ages they were quite technologically sophisticated with a huge textile industry based on English and Spanish wool, water powered mills ,gunpowder weapons ,the printing press and ocean going sailing ships.As well as Cathedrals they founded plenty of Universities and schools such as the Grammar Schools that tradesmens sons such as Cardinal Wolsey and Shakespeare went to.They were far more intellectually curious than the people of the Ancient World whose legacy they built on and went on to surpass.The idea of a poverty stricken ignorant middle ages is very much an 18th century one contrasting own "Age of Reason" to what they called the ages of superstition.

'The period in which these great cathedrals were built was a time of great suffering, poverty, disease and oppression, not a golden age of simple faith. We don't erect buildings like the Parthenon in the 21st century either - that's hardly an argument in favour of polytheistic human sacrifice'

It may be an argument in favour of religion though. Out of interest, is there any record of human sacrifice in Athens in the 5th century BC?

A fine piece, Mr Hitchens, I have intended for some time to visit Lincoln.

I still can't quite understand, however, why this foe of totalitarianism yearns for a celestial version of it. Why does he want to find himself at some tribunal upon leaving the material plane? And what would be the point, given Jehovah's omniscience and therefore his ability to know in advance what the great judgement will be?

Fret not. In all likelihood, death merely reverts to the same 'state' one was in before one was born. It really needn't be feared.

Hey Phil W - I didn't realise Ken Linvingtsone was made of straw! The phrases Mr H uses could easily have come from our former mayor of London, who once described Poundbury as "this empire of squat hovels fit only for a medieval prince". Shows how little he has bothered to try to understand how the past functioned, lazily using the term "medieval" as an insult simply because it is not modern.

And didn't the New Labour government try (succeed?) to end Medieval History as a GCSE subject? Hardly suggests they were that enthused about the era.

Mr Hitchens, Sorry this is a belated comment on your R.Dawkins article

English Linguistic Philosophy.

Apparently. the key to high government office in Britain, is a first class Oxford degree in Modern Greats, preferably from Magdalen. Magdalen is unjustly proud, that five of its members are part of the present government.. Of these Huhne, Hunt and Hague were brilliant scholars of PPE, as is the PM Cameron (Brasenose). Therefore it is a legitimate concern to examine the subject matter, that these outstanding scholars were taught, to produce the less than superb state of the country they govern. Politics and economics are tangible subjects and one can more or less guess the tenor of these courses. But what is the content of the course in philosophy? Well, Doctor Ralph Walker, a most amiable Magdalen fellow, and eminent faculty member for nearly half a century, recalls his experience in the present number of “Oxford Philosophy” (Summer Editon 2011, page 7):

“...Oxford philosophers shared a conception of what the important philosphical problems were and how to resolve hem. ….In 1970 Davidson came to Oxford: suddenly we stopped talking about Wittgenstein and turned to Tarskian truth- theories. In 1972 we all agreed with Quine`s `dismissal of Aristotelian essentialism; then everyone read Kripke and by the autumn, the only question was about necessity of origin.” . Later Prof Walker made a side trip to OU Administration. “When I went there, Dummett`s anti realism was a central concern. When I returned the interest had died.” ditto.

Surely it is not surprising, that students fed on such a diet of trivia can not be expected to solve the real and essential problems of present day society and the policy of wasting scarce financial resources on the teaching of these esoteric doctrines, benefits no one but the erudite teaching staff.

Life is just too fast these days. And I say that as a young man. The neurotically hyperactive pace at which we live our modern day lives, leaves little time for the aesthetic. It's like we're in a constant sate of emergency. No wonder we overlook or do not appreciate the things around us, humble or grand.

"If our vain and puffed up assessment of ourselves is true, and the past was such a dark age of ignorance and superstition, why did that age of superstition produce art and music so immeasurably better than our own?".

I've often wondered about that. What passes for architecture today is usually just a load of boxes piled on top of each other. Great art is an unmade bed. Could it be that the kings and the aristocracy had impeccable taste and, as they were paying for it, expected value for money? Now we have committees and we get 'The Angel of the North'.

Has Mr. Hitchens visited the cathedral in my home town of Hereford, home of the Mappa Mundi? Unfortunately, it's been under reconstruction for as long as I can remember, so one end is usually covered with scaffolding, and at school our morning chapel service was often disturbed by the noise of workmen's drills from outside. Still, I quite like it.

And I don't think that an appreciation of the architecture of religious buildings in this country, which is generally unsurpassed by secular buildings, or of the devotion which went into their construction, or of hymns, choral anthems, works of art and anything else to have come out of our long Christian history, means that we should take seriously the ideas behind them.

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